Science and technology

Writing worth reading

Dark matter

A valuable reputation (New Yorker) Rachel Aviv's profile of Tyrone Hayes, a biologist locked in a public feud with Syngenta, a big agribusiness firm, has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention with its tales of phone-tapping, covert recordings and dirty tricks. But over at Discover, Keith Kloor reminds us that there is more than one way to read the piece.

Why the promise of cheap fuel from super-bugs fell short (MIT Technology Review) Even in an era of expensive oil, it turns out it's still cheaper to dig the stuff out of the ground than to use genetically engineered bacteria to produce it. But the bugs have found a nice sideline in the cosmetics business.

On the governmental DDOSing of Anonymous (Wired) Flooding computers with worthless messages is a common tactic for hackers and cyber-activists. Gabriella Coleman worries about the revelations that Britain's government has been playing them at their own game. "Yet here, the British government is apparently throwing out due process and essentially proceeding straight to the punishment...This is the kind of overreaction that usually occurs when a government is trying to squash dissent; it’s not unlike what happens in other, more oppressive countries."

The man who blew the whistle on a stem-cell fraud (Nature) After eight years Young-Joon Ryu, the researcher who tipped off the authorities about the fraudulent claims of South Korean stem-cell scientist Woo Sook Hwang, finally breaks his silence.

Global temperatures in 2013 (RealClimate) Amid talk of a global warming "pause", the climatological data for 2013 have arrived. Stefan Rahmstorf considers the numbers. By one measurement, "2013 [was] warmer than 1998 (even though 1998 was a record El Nino year, and 2013 was neutral)."

Quite the cuppa (xkcd) How to make a lakeful of tea. (Just add antimatter!)

Readers' comments

Unfortunately, the link to the DDoS article in Wired takes me to the New Yorker article mentioned previously. I checked on Wired and was not able to find that article. There are several other articles available on this topic over the last three days, all going back to the Snowden papers.